The Latest Look at Leopold & Loeb, and an old one - and on hiatus

A British true crime bookseller once told me that most true crime aficionados buy not the first book about a particular case, but the twentieth.

If that holds true, a new book from author Simon Baatz will garner notice and sell well. It's For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago [Amazon; B&N], which came out on August 5. The New York Times has already given its three cents, calling the book "altogether absorbing."

Author Baatz is following in the footsteps of some of the giants of true crime writing, for many pens have put to paper the bizarre, archetypal Leopold and Loeb story. One of the most famous accounts is the essay by Miriam Allen deFord  (the Ann Rule of her generation, the once reigning queen of American true crime). Her essay appears in the newly released True Crime: An American Anthology, edited by Harold Schechter.

Anyone with the remotest interest in true crime writing really out to check out this collection of the best American true crime writing of all time. I'm planning to take it with me and finish it on the beaches of Lake Huron, where this James Gang will be found for the rest of August. CLEWS is on hiatus until September. I look forward to more chitchat about the best books and stories in our favorite genre.

To tide you over until I return, check out Steve Huff's new website, underwritten by the Village Voice, True Crime Report.

Comments

[Elizabeth Kerri Mahon]

I'm dying to read this book. I've been fascinated with Leopold & Leob since I saw the movie Compulsion with Orson Welles as a thinly disguised Clarence Darrow